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âFor The Recordâ: Has the Obama Administration Left the Nation Vulnerable to Terrorism?

âFor The Recordâ: Has the Obama Administration Left the Nation Vulnerable to Terrorism?

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The Obama administrationâs lack
of transparency, purging of crucial terror-related documentation and
failure to counter radical ideologists within the United States has made
the nation vulnerable to terrorism, according to a new government
report and to counterterrorism experts who spoke with TheBlaze.

A February Congressional Research Service report on
âcountering violent extremismâ within the U.S. found that despite
administration policy enacted in 2011, the federal government still
lacks the tools and law enforcement leadership necessary to effectively
combat radicalization in the United States.

The administrationâs
counterterrorism plan fails to adequately target radicalized groups or
individuals, the report said. The report suggested that a number of its
policies actually limit law enforcementâs ability to track down
extremists and said it âmay call for oversight from Congress.â

âThere is no single agency managing
all of the individual activities and efforts of the plan. At the
national level, some may argue that it would be of value to have a
single federal agency in charge of the governmentâs (counter-violent
extremism) efforts,â the congressional report states, adding that there
is also no real clearinghouse either for âlocal entitiesâ to identify
grassroots groups that could aide in counterterrorism efforts.

The report came after years of
complaints by counterterrorism officials about having their hands are
tied and that the governmentâs current Counter Violent Extremism policy â
abbreviated CVE â limits their ability to investigate suspect Muslim
groups within the United States and is not effective.

On Wednesday, The Blaze TVâs For The Record episode
âThe Purgeâ (8 p.m. ET) will reveal how failures to appropriately
investigate extremist groups and actions by the administration to
cleanse what officials deemed as anti-Islamic counterterrorism training
manuals has put the nationâs security at risk. Counterterrorism experts
warned that the administrationâs policies, particularly the âdoâs and
donâtsâ of the counter extremist strategy, have tied the hands of
investigators and instead opened the door for Islamic radicals already
in the United States.

âThere is no single agency managing all of the individual activities and efforts of the plan.â

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Dr. Sebastian Gorka, a counterterrorism expert and assistant professor at National Defense University in Washington, D.C., told For The Record he
is alarmed âthat more Americans arenât up in arms â we are
fundamentally undermining the ability of our brave policemen and
soldiers to do their jobs.â

In 2010 and 2011, Obama administration shifted its policy from a
global war on terror to Countering Violent Extremism, abbreviated CVE.
The new policy, which stated that Al Qaeda was still the main threat to
the United States, would also lead to the purging of any references to
Islam that multiple U.S. Muslim organizations deemed were promoting
âIslamophobia.â On Oct. 19, 2011, nearly 60 U.S. Islamic groups sent a letter to
then-White House counterterrorism czar John Brennan asking him to
establish an interagency advisory board to remove offensive language.

The new policy was just the beginning. Shortly after, federal law
enforcement officers were warned not to âuse training that equates
radical thought, religious expression, freedom to protest, or other
constitutionality protected activity, with criminal activity.â

Gorka, who trains Special Forces and other federal law enforcement
officials, remembers when the White House policies regarding
counterterrorism training changed and when instructors were forced to
turn over their training manuals to determine whether it contained
certain words or phrases would be offensive to Muslims. It limited his
ability to train law enforcement officers effectively, he said.

During that time, Gorka was training the FBI and his manual was taken
by the agency. A week later, he said, he received an email from the FBI
in which âsomebody, somewhere took offense to my slides, calling them
inflammatory and said, either these are removed or you donât get to
brief federal law enforcement.â Gorka eventually discovered that the
extensive edits to his manual came from the highest levels of the civil
rightâs division at the Department of Justice, he said.

Tim Clemente, a former FBI special agent who conducted terrorism and
counter-narcotics investigations, told TheBlaze that the reason these
âgroups continue to operate is because of the perception of religious
scrutiny or persecution if we [the government or the FBI] look too
closely at them and their activities.â

Clemente added, âgroups such as this ordinarily cloak their illicit
activities behind the veil of religious and charitable causes, so they
can remain under the radar, especially when political correctness gets
in the way of actually calling a spade a spade.â

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), a member of the House Judiciary
Committee, told TheBlaze that the Obama administration has no strategy
when it comes to internal terror networks and threats inside the U.S. He
noted that the Congressional Research Service reportâs long list of
recommendations should be a warning that as a nation, the U.S. is
confronted with a number of national security risks it is unprepared to
handle.

âAnyone who looks objectively can see we do not have an effective
strategy to dealing with terrorism because the most egregious threat is
from radical Islam and this administration will not admit that radical
Islam is the biggest violent extremism threat,â said Gohmert, who is
also the vice chair of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and
Homeland Security, which has jurisdiction over federal law enforcement
and internal security.

âYou can never have an effective
strategy to deal with terrorism until youâre willing to identify the
enemy,â Gohmert added. â[Terrorist groups] understand one thing and one
thing only, that is strength. When you show them that [we're a nation]
that does not support radical killing of innocent women and children, as
we did on 9/11, it sends a message that maybe this is not an effective
strategy. This administration needs to have an effective strategy, but
refusing to identify the enemy, continuing to purge our training
documents of anything that might offend particular groups is a failed
one.â

Gohmert said Congress should consider the recommendations made in the government report, which included developing
intervention models currently used by federal and local law enforcement
to target street gangs as a way of targeting possible radical groups in
vulnerable communities.

A Department of Homeland Security official with direct knowledge of
counterterrorism investigations within the United States said âthe
difficulty in determining or investigating what groups or individuals
are radical Islamic extremists is so overwhelming for law enforcement
officialsâ who have basically been hindered by supervisors from looking
into groups that can threaten to sue law enforcement agencies or
individuals for violating their individual rights.

If the âfederal government in the business of determining which
ideologies are dangerous and which are safeâessentially determining
which beliefs are good and which are badâ then Congress should ask the
Administration to âdefine exactly what it means when referring to
violent extremist narratives,â the report states.

The report also recommended that Congress determine what criteria the
administration uses in selecting the Muslim groups that it works with,
and do they hold those groups to certain conditions, described as ârules
of the roadâ in the study.

âCongress may opt to consider whether there is a need to require the
administration to release public guidelines in this area,â the report
states.

The report also questioned whether
government agencies involved in clandestine counterterrorism work, like
the FBI, Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security
should be doing community outreach because it âmight not be particularly
effective to have the same federal agencies responsible for classified
counterterrorism investigations grounded in secrecy also be the main
players in (countering violent-extremism) strategy.â

âIf a community views government counterterrorism investigative
activity as overly aggressive, it may not willingly cooperate in
engagement programs,â the report stated. âOne expert has noted that
âcounter-radicalization is not about intelligence-gathering nor is it
primarily about policing.â

We've been toast since that buffoon waltzed into the WH. Look at the Boston Marathon bombers. The WH was handed a warning on a silver platter about the brother who went to Russia to train in the radical Musllim area there, and they just blew it off. Had they investigated him, the BM bombing could have been prevented.

No, no. Obama doesn't believe there are radical Muslims out to attack us.

âFor The Recordâ: Has the Obama Administration Left the Nation Vulnerable to Terrorism?

I am amazed at the countries that we have turned on, and the ones that we can no longer call our allies. I think that we are a target for terrorists and lots of hostile countries because of Obama's weaknesses and it will take a long time to recover.

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